Hi, Greg, I could do a split but I have a flow just about to start and would rather a little excitement than miss the final flow for the year. This is my Flow Hive we are talking about here, and my grandchildren will very be disappointed and drop me off the Top of the Pops list if they donāt get any honey for their toast and sandwiches.
I just went for a walk around and the girls are still busily re-orientating with absolutely no aggressive behaviour at all. That situation will no doubt change when I open the box tomorrow.
I also walked down the hill and there were about twenty lost bees near the trees, again no aggression.
With the weather being warm to hot Iāll let them work it out for themselves as I am sure that over the next couple of days they will find the new location or beg entry to the long hive.
Nowā¦ do I use a 1-2 beat or a 3-4? I wonder if a classical rhythm would be more effective than a rock, country or def metal? Maybe I should punk it up! Should I use my hands, dish mops, lumps of wood, or hammers? All the things I havenāt decided yet
Does anyone have a sound bite for the deaths head hawk moth when they are calming bees? I could play that as well
If you follow these instructions the bees in the hive will only have access to the narrow sides (top and bottom and end), the queen will be safe from any aggressive actions. This will also allow the attendants in the cage to protect the queen until the hive frees her. There is a risk that one or more of the attendants will die before the queen is released, Iām not sure if this is because of injury by the hive bees or stress. The candy goes on the upper side angled upwards to ensure that any dead attendants donāt block the exit.
My queen is not colour coded that I could see. Is yours?
Yes Iāve placed her in between two frames as instructed. I just placed her there to see the reaction. No she is not marked. Iām curious if these queens were November hatched ie. 2018 or more recent. I forgot to ask. I will mark her once her is settled I guess. You?
My apologies, I thought you were moving the hive away so that all of the older bees would leave the hive & go back to the original site, so as to make it easier to find the queen. As you were. cheers
PS, it could be said that one manās hot hive could be another manās lukewarm hive. I have dealt with āhotā hives & I try to, at all cost avoid shaking the bees. Not only for my neighbors sake, but also for my sake. They try extremely hard to find a way to sting you. I canāt stand it while they are doing that.
No need to apologize, having some of the foragers get lost for a little while was a partial option, as was hoping the lost bees would beg entry to the long hive, but these girls are way too smart. If there were a large number at the old site I would have provided accommodation as I donāt want to weaken the hive, just tame it.
Iād never done a short hive move and the way everyone bangs on about the 10-10 rule I half expected to find a very large percentage of the girls hanging out at the old site. A check at dusk last night showed less than a handful of lost bees and this morning there were none.
Maybe Western Australiaās tight genetics has ensured that we have, not only healthy bees, but smarter bees as well.
Iām walking a hive at the moment. I reverse it 2 meters at a time every time I visit my bees. Itās a swarm I picked up last week at my bee site a fair way from the hives. Between the gate & my hives. I havenāt identified which hive it came from, after checking every hive. None of them look weak enough to have swarmed.
Iām glad itās not just me. Havenāt been on the thread for a while, but interested to know that one of my hives is suffering along with others mentioned here.
We did an inspection here on the block in Pemberton this morning and I was expecting the worst for the hive that has the Flow Super. I thought I would have outsmarted myself as I have had nothing but trouble since I started nearly 3 years ago now. I decided that I should have a double deep so the bees can store up for winter, and then fill up the Flow Super when they are finished and I will harvest from that. On previous inspections the middle box was goling nowhere fast, so to my surprise this morning, the middle super is 90% full of capped honey and I couldnāt be happier about it. I have been complaining of not enough forage for months now, so this is not what I expected to see.
The bees are busy in the F Frames so hopefully there will be enough flower coming on to fill them this year for the first time. Iām almost sorry I didnāt leave the middle super off and they would have filled the flow frames by now. Oh well!! Everything is either really slow this year, or not flowering at all, the crepe myrtle havenāt flowered here yet, although when I was driving through Guildford some weeks back they were spectacular.
Our 2nd hive is going along the same lines as those mentioned in previous posts, very little brood and very little activity, so hopefully they will kick along soon also.
Thanks for all your posts and the info that you supply to those of us who do a lot of worrying about our bees.
If I get a harvest this year I will be chuffed.
Interestingly enough no Queen either Plenty of brood and I even saw a bee emerging but no eggs or grubs. A couple of play cups, a couple of rows of drone cells and one and a half frames of honey. I also have 2 fully capped flow frames which I will leave for now. I cleaned out the cross comb on the frames and boxes, reassembled including emptying every frame to re-check for a queen hiding somewhere and am convinced she was AWOL. I installed a new metal Qx and Jackās queen cage and will find out in a couple of weeks if all is ok. My darling wife made a time-lapse video which I will post on my channel after I have a couple of cups of tea to rehydrate.
Gday all, was the apiarists society meeting last thursday and most are saying a very much a reduced to no honey flow this season
Most like me have extracted the 1st harvest prior to xmas and now everyones waitingā¦
I picked up a hive sitting in a friends to be thrown away clothes cupboard, was quite a big colonyā¦
Had to buy an 8 frame brood box to take the 4/5 frames of comb and honey, as the queen had very few brood on the go and i threw in some stickies on the ends to further entice her.
Left the box there for two days, she settled down and now is at my place. BTW 2 FH and 2 Langs, i wont buy anymore FHs as i cant see such a huge and benefit once you balance all things out, jmo.
My next hives will be coffin hives which i will fabricate, much easier access and you can still run them as doubles or triples if u need to in a strong flowā¦and yr working at a nice height, not lifting boxes and the like.
4 hives now, its getting out of hand now ,lol
Yep, marri is blossoming around here, plenty of pollen but no nectar, I smell honey around the hives but its not making it to the supers.
I have 5 colonys all from different sources and each is showing different characteristics.
Hoping for a cooler weekend to see whats going on in the brood box.
Ill also be going in and inspecting all my hives this weekendā¦Certainly was too hot last weekend to open hives up so just tried to cool them of a little more in the arvo
You guys are going to laugh but i have a lil karcher i use and spray the whole area down with one of the nozzlesā¦i also spray the mist around the hives (from a distance) and wet nearby trees down and as soon as i start, bees all start to fly thru the mist im spraying i guess to drink and cool down
They def like it, wierd as i thought it would fire them up, but its the opposite, they will stop bearding and fly thru the spray, go figure
Iāve noticed the last few days that the trees around me are starting to flower. A couple of trees have quite a good bloom and a few others seem not far behind There might be hope for my recovering hive!
Can multiple queens coexist within a hive for months?
Yesterday we found our red marked queen. Last month we found an unmarked queen, 2 month before that we found two queens and marked the red queen and dispatched the old one. No new queen cells since months ago. Yes we could have missed one.
we are talking about here, and my grandchildren will very be disappointed 
and drop me off the Top of the Pops list if they donāt get any honey for their toast and sandwiches.
Plenty of brood and I even saw a bee emerging 
